


Like a dress

by Katerprise



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Human Trafficking, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katerprise/pseuds/Katerprise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tries it on, like a dress.<br/>She decides it doesn't fit,<br/>and starts to take it off.<br/>Her skin comes, too. <br/>Lola Haskin</p><p>To Natasha, love, and her life, are clothes that never quite fit right. Never feel real.</p><p>The warnings in the tags are all very vaguely implied/briefly mentioned, but wanted to be on the safe side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a dress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lokifan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokifan/gifts).



> My friend Lokifan celebrates National Poetry Month by posting a poem she loves every day. One day she posted this with a Black Widow icon. This kind of evolved from there.

Natasha is her name, her identity. The Red Room stripped her of much, but her name is one identifier she clings to. She knows it isn’t tactically advantageous that her aliases tend to be related (Natalie, Natalia, Nadine) but it feels hers. Black Widow is what she may be, but Natasha is who she thinks she is inside. 

Her childhood memories are difficult. They sink and float independently of her control. Trying to decide what makes her herself is near impossible. She lives as much in the present as she can.  
If she danced for years as a child to build her gracefulness or had it implanted deep in her brain is foggy to her. She knows how to dance though. Clint once saw her practicing a scene from Swan Lake and he simply sat enrapt with her movements. Even growing up with acrobats and contortionists couldn’t prepare him for that, he said.  
If she has always preferred savoury to sweet food.  
If she killed first while still under ten, or as a teenager.  
If she ever had a friend named Rebecca who was scared of the rain.

She knows she must have had parents. But if they loved and cared for her till they were killed when she was eight or if they gave her to the Red Room as an infant she’s not sure. The records were destroyed long ago. 

She likes to imagine (when she’s alone, and safe, as safe as she can be) that they did love her. That the warmth in her memories as two adults looked down at her was from parents who wanted her, who waited anxiously as she grew inside, waiting to meet her. Not from Officers watching her assemble and disassemble a gun while blindfolded (fastest they’d ever seen). That the feeling of someone stroking her hair was a caring mother or father, not someone examining her for future potential as an assassin or one of the not so lucky girls who were moved into trafficking. (That’s one of her worst memories. Seeing the girls being split into two groups. Not knowing if the pretty ones were to get the better or worse treatment. Not knowing which she would be in.)

She thinks she knows which are real. But it is oh so nice to pretend that she knew once what love was. That someone loved her for what a child was: vulnerable, trusting, curious. Not as a weapon. 

She’s had relationships. A few scant affairs here and there. It took years for her to know that her naked body was not a weapon in her arsenal, that touch could be gentle, that people would like that she preferred coffee over tea, unless it was loose leaf. That bodies could curl around hers in comfort, in pleasure, rather than pain, in pleading for their lives. 

She’s had people tell her they love her. She doesn’t know what to say back.

I enjoy you.

It doesn’t sound the same. 

She’s tried. But it’s obvious she doesn’t know how to make herself love. They smile sadly (pity) and say it isn’t something you make yourself do. It’s something that happens. 

Natasha has never had something just happen in her life. 

She still tries. Acts like those memories make her think she should. The warmth, the soft smiles, the touching just for the sake of it. 

It makes her sick to realise she is still only acting out her training. 

Love, apparently, is not in her training. 

Friends she does have. They see her as a friend. They are only ever her allies. And allies can be temporary. Can be disposable. 

So she steps out of it. Out of love.

Every time, it’s like stepping out of another skin. And it burns.

**Author's Note:**

> Love by Lola Haskins
> 
> She tries it on, like a dress.  
> She decides it doesn't fit,  
> and starts to take it off.  
> Her skin comes, too.


End file.
